MOST council tax payers would agree that saving money is a good thing for a local authority to aspire to.

But when cutting the budget becomes a council's primary goal regardless of all other considerations, one would suspect that rather fewer people would be in favour.

However, that's exactly the accusation being levelled against Worcestershire County Council by Malvern Hills District Council leader Di Raynor in our page 2 story today.

She says that when the council considered the possibility of scrapping district councils and transforming itself into a unitary authority, it got its priorities wrong.

Its main objective was not how it could create the infrastructure to deliver better services, more efficiently, to the people of this county, but how it could save money in the short term.

Ms Raynor - who says she is not opposed to unitary authorities in principle - is right to say cash should not be the sole consideration for axing an entire tier of local government.

By definition, smaller authorities are more representative of and responsive to the people they serve, and while there is bound to be some costly duplication of bureaucracy and services with the next layer of government up, scrapping them is not a decision to be taken lightly.

In the end, Worcestershire County Council decided to keep things as they are and has now has pledged to work with its district partners to think of ways it could save money.

Whatever keeps council taxes down and preserves services will be fine with the people of Worcestershire.